One of my greatest aims is to make Whitechapel a nexus for Desirable Information.

Memes, virals, that which makes you laugh, that which makes your bowels weep; anything found or scavenged online which has no informative value: that stuff will continue to go in “Around The Net.” I’ll be updating that once every four weeks too.

This…? This is for everything else.

News Stories. Mad Science. Horrific Nature. Metaphysical madness.

Here is where we gorge ourselves on the creamy clostrum of Information. Here is where we nuzzle at the red-raw teat of the Up-To-Date Dataweb. Bring me the light of your Weird Wisdom and your New News.

(Anything of particular interest, go ahead and create new threads in this category to delve deeper.)

In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.

Indeed, the American government has more information on the average American than Stalin had on Russians, Hitler had on German citizens, or any other government has ever had on its people.

Sharp spending cuts and tax increases have long played a central role in the International Monetary Fund's prescriptions for governments in financial distress -- most recently for the struggling members of the euro area. Now, officials at the world's primary arbiter of fiscal prudence are recognizing that such austerity can do a lot more damage than previously thought.

I find it backwards that a guy who is defending his rights of free speech and gun use started a petition to deport someone for exercising the right of free speech...but then I looked Jones up and realized that logic just doesn't seem to play in to things.

It was so hot in the South Australian outback town of Oodnadatta yesterday that the local servo stopped selling petrol [...] Mrs Plate said the Roadhouse couldn't serve unleaded fuel after midday because it was vapourising and wouldn't pump in the extreme heat.

The essence of the explanation appears to be that "negative temperature" doesn't mean "colder than absolute zero". Instead, it describes a state where adding more heat decreases entropy - which is the opposite of what happens in positive temperature systems.

Also, as is often the case in physics reporting, the buzz is attached to the wrong bit of the result; it seems that this is far from the first time that a negative temperature system has been created (the first was in 1951). Instead, what is apparently notable is the elegant experimental method used.

"Firstly Tina, measles don't run and catch you or hurt you… for most children it is a good thing to get measles," she says. "Many wise people believe measles make the body stronger and more mature for the future."

Greek police have stepped up efforts to catch illegal immigrants in recent months, launching a new operation to check the papers of people who look foreign. But tourists have also been picked up in the sweeps - and at least two have been badly beaten.When Korean backpacker Hyun Young Jung was stopped by a tall scruffy looking man speaking Greek on the street in central Athens he thought it might be some kind of scam, so he dismissed the man politely and continued on his way.A few moments later he was stopped again, this time by a man in uniform who asked for his documents. But as a hardened traveller he was cautious.Greece was the 16th stop in his two-year-long round-the-world trip and he'd often been warned about people dressing in fake uniforms to extract money from backpackers, so while he handed over his passport he also asked the man to show him his police ID.Instead, Jung says, he received a punch in the face.Within seconds, the uniformed man and his plainclothes partner - the man who had first approached Jung - had him down on the ground and were kicking him, according to the Korean.

@Purple Wyrm: yeah, the Australian Vaccination Network are a bunch of moronic fuckheads. They were only just forced to change their misleading name last month, after years of masquerading as a legitimate health advisory organisation.